CHAPTER XX
UNDER ARREST
An hour later a Prussian sergeant and two privates marched into the grounds. The sergeant mounted the steps and having rung the bell proceeded to hammer on the door. Phil answered the call, and was not long in realising that he was under arrest. The sergeant could not say why, such details not being in his orbit of duty. His orders were to bring one young man from the chateau to headquarters. The only thing for Phil was to take the situation philosophically.
"I never did like melodrama," he said, as he stood by the steps under the guard of the two privates, while the sergeant was searching his room for incriminating evidence.
"Don't!" pleaded the girls together. "Don't joke about it!"
"And answer all their questions politely," added Helen. "If we don't hear anything by to-night we'll come to headquarters or get the curé to go there."
"I'll be as polite as pie," said Phil. "And don't you be too serious about it," he added warningly, in turn. "When I show my papers to some one in authority I'll be all right."
"It was I who got you into this!" Helen exclaimed, beset by a new thought. "If I hadn't stayed——"
Perhaps a better "if" would have referred to Henriette's beauty.
"Nonsense! It's all a mistake!" said Phil.
"Plot complete!" he added, as the sergeant appeared with the letters and papers that he had found in Phil's room carefully tied up and announced, with barrack-room gruffness that it was time to march.
Phil could only smile over his shoulder as he was faced about under the escort of the two privates. From Helen he had an encouraging smile in response; from Henriette a look of fright and appeal. Inwardly he was boiling. It was the first time that he or any Sanford for many generations had known the loss of liberty for five minutes. This callous old sergeant, these two men with fixed bayonets walking on either side of Phil, had no business in France. They were invaders.
On through the village street beside the gorge of transport he was conducted, then down the long avenue of trees to Count de la Grange's chateau. There he was halted and every scrap of paper in his pockets removed. He stood for a time, while officers and messengers passed up and down the steps, before he was taken indoors.
At the end of the long hall, its ceiling cracked and yellow from the neglect of impoverished nobility, its walls hung with family portraits, sat General Rousseau under guard, his aquiline nose and finely-moulded chin in bold relief. As Phil was directed along the hall, the sound of his steps on the marble flooring drew the General's attention. The glances of the two met. Phil was about to speak, when his impulse was stayed by the fact that he was looking at a profile which seemed oblivious of his presence.
"He is in trouble and does not want to recognise me lest he get me in trouble," Phil thought, "or I might get him into deeper trouble."
The General sat stiffly erect, a space between his coat back and the chair back, something distinguished and calm in his manner, with a smiling turn to his lips which completed an air of quiet triumph unaffected by his surroundings. Directly an officer came out from one of the rooms and motioned to the General to enter the open door in front of him. Phil was then moved up to the seat thus vacated, whence he could look into the salon, with its long French windows open on the garden. Before a table sat a German general of fifty-five or so, his bullet head close-cropped and his profile as set as if it were carved out of stone. On the wall at his back was a large map with blue pencil markings. In front of him stood old Rousseau, head up, his lips still having the turn of a faint smile.
Division Commander von Stein was reading from a paper, which stated that the General had given information to the enemy by means of carrier pigeons.
"What have you to say?" demanded von Stein.
"That I am not a lawyer; but, speaking as a soldier," replied General Rousseau in an even voice, "I am happy to say that my last pigeon went before you could intercept it."
"As a soldier you knew what to report," said von Stein rather affably. "It was clever of you and you must have sent some valuable information."
If he could learn the nature of the information it might enable him to counteract some of its results; but General Rousseau's smile broadened a little at this obvious bait of flattery.
"I'm even a good enough soldier not to tell you that," he replied. "Perhaps your soldiers are learning this moment," he added proudly.
"As you have confessed——" von Stein rapped out in irritation.
"Yes," replied the General calmly, almost sweetly.
"You know the penalty?"
"Yes. I expected it. I found a way to serve France and I am ready."
Without waiting on further instructions, closing the interview himself with a certain disdainful impatience, he saluted and turned toward his guard. The full light through the large windows limned his fine, aristocratic profile and his gaunt, tall form. He was victorious in that moment and a gentleman; and the man in the chair, conscious of some quality in the Frenchman lacking in himself but admiring as soldier to soldier, exclaimed, "It is war!" and rose to his feet, saluting the man whom he had condemned, in turn.
Phil had the call to disregard his own position and rush to General Rousseau's side in his tribute of admiration. It seemed horrible at first thought to see that gallant veteran go to his death without a friendly word. But two girls were waiting at the chateau for Phil's return. He imagined that the General preferred to be alone. Nothing could equal the knowledge of his deed for France in comforting him. Still disdainful of the Prussian, lips still turned in a smile, he was marched out into the grounds—which is the full explanation of why Madame Ribot had only the Count for an escort to Paris.
Since an old man had been caught releasing pigeons which carried information to the French as to the location of three divisions of German troops and might cost the Germans five thousand men, von Stein was taking a hand in the espionage problem himself. Phil was summoned and, standing on the same spot where General Rousseau had stood, he saw all his letters and his diary lying on the Commander's table. Two officers were standing on either side of him. One of them went out after the Commander had signed some papers, and through the open door Phil had a glimpse through other open doors of rooms with walls hung with maps and of telegraph instruments and officers writing and conferring. Here was the inner circle of a division command directing all the action of guns and men which he had seen from the terrace at Mervaux, with office routine in a secluded chateau; while von Stein, the man with the responsibility of decisions, sat aloof in the salon.
The remaining officer, a major, evidently had something to do with Phil's case. Phil recalled Helen's advice: Answer all their questions politely. This he would do; and, with the example of General Rousseau as an inspiration, he waited for the first move. Von Stein looked up slowly, raising his bushy eyebrows to see what sort of dirt this was in front of him, and then regarded Phil with a sweeping glance of ferocity. It was the very thing to give Phil smiling confidence.
"Old Frightfulness is going to try to scare me!" he thought.
Having been both in Germany and in the Southwest, he recognised that the tactics of a master hand in the world's greatest military machine might be humanly the same as those of a bandit leader across the Rio Grande.
"So you are the spy!" von Stein growled.
"Not at all, sir!" Phil replied.
"Be careful! You are on oath."
"So I understand."
"Are you English?" demanded von Stein, with an access of roaring emphasis.
From the frequency of this question and its venom Phil gathered that the English could not be popular in German military circles.
"No, American."
"Prove it!"
"As you have all my papers there, may I suggest that you have the proof?"
Von Stein mumbled an ejaculation through his moustache, while the corrugations between the bushy brows and the grey line of closely-clipped hair twitched.
"What are you in Europe for?"
"To see Europe—and I'm seeing more of it than I bargained for," answered Phil.
"Do not joke! War is war! What do you mean, you a foreigner, an American, you say, by being here when our army came?"
"Your army came so fast that I could not get away from it," said Phil drily, as he might on a hot day in cactus land.
"Hur-r-r!" or something like it, escaped through von Stein's moustache and he wiggled his lips in a way that might have meant an effort to control a grin. "Why are you in that chateau?"
Phil explained quite clearly, even telling how Helen had remained behind and he had returned to look after her and to find that it was impossible to get away before the army came.
"What is your business in America?"
Phil told this, too.
"As you say; but how can we tell that what you say is true?"
"As obviously neither my own statement nor appearance counts, by investigation of my references at home through my government, if my papers and letters are not sufficient."
"Hur-r-r!" again mumbled von Stein. Then he broke out with fearful frightfulness: "Don't you know that we can have you shot as a spy?" he thundered.
As Phil had previously remarked, he had never liked melodrama. It had quite gone out of fashion at home, except in motion pictures of the Southwest as shown in New York and of New York as shown in the Southwest.
"Considering the number of your soldiers, not to mention the number of your guns and that I am unarmed, I should venture, with all respect, to say that that is a safe statement," said Phil, and he was smiling pleasantly.
"Hur-r-r!" again through the moustache; but in von Stein's grey eyes appeared an irresistible twinkle and this time he actually grinned. He was not without a sense of humour. He read the Fliegende Blatter every week.
"It agrees with my examination of his papers," put in the Major, indicating the exhibit on the table. "One of these letters is from his employer, a big man on the other side," he added; and Phil, who knew German better than French, understood the remark.
The General took three or four minutes to run his eye over the letters and the diary, grumbling the while, and finally snorting with disgust as he picked them up and handed them to Phil.
"Who brought these charges?" he demanded of the Major. Up to that time he had read only the presentment of the case and the object of his questions had been to trip the accused.
"Lieutenant von Eichborn, sir."
Now Phil saw what Prussian rage was like; the rage against inefficiency, against disobedience and waste of time.
"Fool! Puppy dog! Pampered jackanapes!" he roared. "Tell that worthless nephew of mine to come here! I'll deal with him for the last time!"
"He is out, sir. He went to see about a billet for himself," said the Major very officially, but in his eyes was a satisfied gleam as the General literally choked with rage against not only all the un-Prussian crimes already mentioned, but worse.
"Out! A personal aide out without my permission in time of war! Billeting away from this chateau! If there are no beds, let him sleep on the floor at my door ready for my call! Out—when we are fighting a battle!"
"Possibly you will find him at Mervaux," Phil could not help saying, "engaged in persecuting my cousin—which accounts for my impatience at being here under false charges."
"Take care, sir!" said von Stein, turning his ferocity on Phil. "You are a civilian making accusations against a Prussian officer and gentleman!"
"A suggestion only. Am I acquitted? I am in haste to return."
Von Stein lowered his brows, with a searching look at Phil.
"Of course you think we are Huns," he said. "The English have told you so. Huns!" The very word irritated him, yet he seemed to like to repeat it. "Huns! We bring order wherever we go. We are fighting in our defence in a war that was forced upon us!"
There, Phil let his Southwestern sense of humour eclipse discretion.
"Yes, the English and the French secretly prepared against you! They made thousands of new guns and marched into Belgium and invaded Germany!" he said.
The Commander's eyes blazed. He stammered, Phil thought that he had done for himself; and then that old professional soldier grinned.
"Huns, are we? You go back to your chateau and stay there. Not a thing on the premises will be harmed. You will be as safe as you are at home. Everybody is. If you are not, let me know. And tell your friends in America that we are not Huns."
For after the orgy of Belgium orders had come from the Most High which had America in mind. Even the Most High realised the moral force of the hundred million people across the water. Even the Most High had found that there was a thing called world public opinion.
"Stood up to it, that young man!" muttered von Stein after Phil had gone. Having been used to ordering inferiors about all his life, he had had a diversion. "Now!" as another officer came into the room with a report.
He was the cool man of judgment and precision as he went to the map, drew some lines with his pencil, and gave some orders. After this officer had departed he was alone in the big room. Leaders out on the battle line had been told what to do and they must do it on his responsibility. He could give no further orders till he knew the result. Opening the door to the adjoining room he asked:
"How long will it take to run to the chateau of Mervaux?"
"Five minutes, sir!"
"Good! I'll be back in a quarter of an hour and I am to be found there or on the road."
He strode out to the powerful motor-car that was always in waiting for him.